As I think back to my many entrepreneurial endeavors that failed (e.g. post mortem of a failed product), several clear themes come to mind. It isn’t that any one issue or challenge was the culprit, rather there were a number of items that colluded together. Also, most were within my control and I still failed.

Here are five simple reasons entrepreneurs fail:

Not giving it 100% - it’s hard enough to succeed when working on something full-time that entrepreneurs working on an idea part-time are even more likely to fail because they won’t make enough progress to figure out how to make it successful

Premature scaling – resources are scarce so a self-inflicted death is more likely when staff or resources are added before a business model is found (see startups shouldn’t hire a VP of Sales)